Patagonia’s Ice Fields Are Continuously Massive And Thicker Than Previously Thought – New Study

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Patagonia is home to the largest ice fields in the Southern Hemisphere outside Antarctica, and its glaciers are among the fastest-moving in the world.

After conducting a comprehensive, seven-year survey of Patagonia’s glaciers, researchers say that Patagonia’s ice fields are continuously massive.

Perito Moreno Glacier PatagoniaPerito Moreno Glacier Patagonia. Image source 

Through a combination of ground observations and airborne gravity and radar sounding methods, the scientists created the most complete ice density map of the area to date and found that some glaciers are as much as a mile (1,600 meters) thick.

“We did not think the ice fields on the Patagonian plateau could be quite that substantial,” co-author Eric Rignot, Donald Bren Professor and chair of Earth system science at University of California, Irvine, said in a press release.

“As a result of this multinational research project, we found that—added together—the northern and southern portions of Patagonia clearly hold more ice than anticipated, roughly 40 times the ice volume of the European Alps.”

Traditional sounding techniques (only used in the shallowest sections of the ice field) cannot contribute  successfully  to predict the region’s potential contribution to sea level rise. The scientists have to make their observations and measurements, flying over terrain in helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft equipped with gravimeters, devices that can determine the ice volume by reading changes in Earth’s gravitational field.

Very useful is also data collected by glaciologists from Chile’s Center for Scientific Studies, who had mapped ice thickness with low-frequency airborne radar sounding since 2002, was instrumental in creating a more comprehensive description of the area’s conditions.

“This research has been enhanced and successfully completed thanks to our collaboration with the Rignot group at UCI and our Argentinean colleagues, with whom we have worked at both sides of the southern Patagonia ice field—disregarding the political border that divides the region,” said co-author Andrés Rivera of the Chilean center.

Original story – here

Paper

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer